The tech giant says the service is made possible “through a partnership with multiple customers across various verticals”. Experts will do anything from deep investigate of machines to answering questions on potential threats. It combines with a feature that delivers targetted attack notifications to users. These are tailored to the organization in question and aim to educate them on critical threats to their network in a timely manner. Together, these capabilities are called Microsoft Threat Experts and are now generally available. “On a daily basis, organizations have to fend off the onslaught of increasingly sophisticated attacks that present unique security challenges in security: supply chain attacks, highly targeted campaigns, hands-on-keyboard attacks,” said the company in a blog post. “With Microsoft Threat Experts, customers can work with Microsoft to augment their security operations capabilities and increase confidence in investigating and responding to security incidents.”
Customized Threat Alerts
Users can contact a security expert directly from the attack alert, which provides useful information like the risk level, type of intrusion, and recommended actions. Thanks to a 90-day free ATP trial, potential customers can try this functionality for free.
Microsoft highlights one particular instance in which an alert led to the targetted attack notification which was passed onto experts who were able to help a customer fully mitigate the incident and improve their security posture. Of course, once your free trial is over, this doesn’t come cheap. The effective cost of Microsoft Defender ATP is around $72 per user per year. This considers the price difference between an E3 subscription, which doesn’t include it, and E5, which does. For a large company, though, this degree of threat protection could save millions.
